UA 925 from London (LHR) to Washington (IAD) on February 27, 2010

Usually, United flight 925 is one of my favorites.  Scheduled to leave London at 4:20 in the afternoon and arrive in Washington at 7:34 in the evening, this flight lets you spend a little more time in England and you don’t have to rush to the airport early in the morning.

This turned out to be a pretty awful flight, though.  It was absolutely full, and I volunteered to give up my seat, but unfortunately the no-shows allowed the plane to leave without a single empty seat and nobody was able to take a bump.  Since it was such a full flight and I am now in the ignominious position of holding a just a blue card on United, I was given one of the punishment seats — 41J on the Boeing 777.  All my attempts to engineer a seat change failed!

I have been in punishment seats before, but I think this is the worst.  First, it is in the back of the plane at the point, and it at the point where the fuselage becomes narrower.  So they put the seats in a 2-4-2 configuration rather than 2-5-2 as in the rest of the economy section of the plane.  (For the uninitiated, this simply means SEAT-SEAT-AISLE-SEAT-SEAT-SEAT-SEAT-AISLE-SEAT-SEAT).

41J is the third seat across in the middle section so you need to ask your neighbor to move if you need to get up for any reason.  With four seats in your row and five seats in the row in front of you,  your seat isn’t aligned to a screen in front of you making it almost impossible to enjoy a movie.  The seats are a little narrower than in the rest of the economy section because they can’t put a tray in the seat in front of you so they have to put the tables in the arm rests.

I continue to refuse to pay extra for “Economy Plus” on United, but I strongly recommend that readers avoid traveling in this row.  Consult SeatGuru.com for advice on seating!

Food was predictable — fairly juicy breast of chicken; a nasty salad; and a dessert that most people left.  Flights out of London do offer butter rather than the strange spread that you get on flights originating out of Washington.  Drinks were offered at $6.00 each, and the wine was the rather poor Redwood Creek.

A strange snack appears about two hours before landing — a sandwich (not nice), a bag of crisps (chips), and a Twix.

The flight left on time and arrived a little early.  I’ll continue to use this flight to get my Star Alliance points, but this was one of the most unpleasant transatlantic flights I have had in a long time.

I resent United behaving like a low cost carrier particularly as this flight cost $1250 for the round trip.